


Softly, But With Much Feeling

by SushiOwl



Series: Steter Trumblr Prompts [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 12:09:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4564137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SushiOwl/pseuds/SushiOwl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hey, do you want to get some ice cream or something?” he asked Peter, who lifted his eyes after a second and blinked at Stiles.</p><p>“Me?” he asked, before he looked around and seemed to realize that he was surrounded by people going to town on each other’s tonsils. “Oh.”</p><p>“Do you want to go or not?” Stiles asked, feeling impatient. He’d probably regret going somewhere with this guy, but if he stayed here or went home alone, he was going to scream.</p><p>And not for ice cream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Softly, But With Much Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> For Mysenia and Sexxlinski  
> This one got away from me in length and amount of time I spent on it. I hope it's good though.

Stiles didn’t believe in soulmates. Well, at least not for him. Sure, he had seen it. Erica had Boyd. Isaac had Allison. Derek had Braeden. And Scott had Kira. For the longest time he’d wished Lydia was his soulmate, but it was obvious in the way she and Jackson were that they were meant for each other. He’d thought maybe Malia was his soulmate, and while he was attracted to her and she to him, it wasn’t the electric, burning desire that everyone else that had found their other half felt. That and they didn’t have the same mark.

Stiles stared at the ground as Malia was telling him about someone she’d met, a girl, who had the same collection of freckles on her arm, making an infinity symbol. Apparently they’d brushed against her at the pastry shop when Malia was buying her three strawberry danishes that she had to have everyday or she would kill something.

“I’m sorry, Stiles,” she said, and she didn’t sound sorry. Stiles knew that she just said some things because she thought that was what people were supposed to do.

“It’s okay,” he replied, even though it wasn’t. He’d expected it, but he wasn’t in a hurry to be lonely.

Also, why did soulmates have to be so gross in public? It was like having your other gave you a pass to suck face in front of others. Pack meetings at Derek’s were awful. They started out fine with everyone keeping a respectful distance and just holding hands or something, and then someone would kiss, and bam, everyone was all over each other like it was an orgy. Sigh.

Stiles frowned as Braeden attached herself to Derek’s face right as he got done saying that everything was cool in Beacon Hills. He looked around at the others, and they were already swapping saliva. Malia was all over her new girlfriend, growling and moaning.

The only person that wasn’t macking on someone else was Peter, and he was just sitting there on his phone like it didn’t bother him at all. It was probably the abandonment that he’d been feeling when Malia stopped being his girlfriend that made him stand and walk over to the creeper wolf. He didn’t want to be alone.

“Hey, do you want to get some ice cream or something?” he asked Peter, who lifted his eyes after a second and blinked at Stiles.

“Me?” he asked, before he looked around and seemed to realize that he was surrounded by people going to town on each other’s tonsils. “Oh.”

“Do you want to go or not?” Stiles asked, feeling impatient. He’d probably regret going somewhere with this guy, but if he stayed here or went home alone, he was going to scream. 

And not for ice cream.

Peter hit the lock button on his phone and stood up, before he shoved his phone into his pocket. “Okay, but we’re going to Rita’s.” He started toward the door.

“What?” Stiles asked, walking over him. “We can just go to Baskin Robbins. It’s so much closer.” He watched Peter open the heavy door of the loft and looked back to see that no one even noticed. He closed it behind himself.

“Sure, but do you want ice cream with freezer burn and disgusting additives, or do you want rich and creamy frozen custard?” Peter asked, waiting for Stiles to catch up before he started to move. 

Stiles walked next to him. “Okay, you have a point. But Rita’s is so much more expensive.”

“If that’s your only complaint, I’ll pay for you,” Peter said as they headed toward the exit.

Stiles blinked, before he grinned. “That’s weirdly nice of you.”

“No, I just want you to shut up,” Peter said without missing a beat. 

The smile fell right off of Stiles’s face. “Of course you do,” he said with a heavy sigh. He decided he wasn’t going to say a word until they got to the frozen custard shop, which was a good 45 minutes away. See how Peter liked that.

That lasts about two minutes, because when Stiles saw Peter’s car, he couldn’t help but let out an appreciative whistle. It was silver and sleek, and god, was Peter James Bond? “Sweeeeet ride,” he all but sang as the car’s lights flashed with Peter unlocked it with the fob on his key-ring. 

“Of course,” Peter said, walking around the car to the driver’s side.

“The proper response is ‘thank you’,” Stiles huffed at him.

Peter just gave him a bland look over the top of the dark as he opened the door and slid inside. Yeah, Stiles should know better by now.

Stiles got into the car and buckled in. Once they pulled onto the road, the ride as smooth as gliding on ice, Stiles drummed his fingers on his knee. It was so quiet. “Can I play with your radio?”

“Have you ever been pushed out of a moving car?”

“No.”

“There’s your answer.” 

Stiles let out such an exaggerated sigh, before he crossed his arms and leaned against the door, letting his head bonk onto the glass of the window. “Fine, I’ll just stare at the scenery.” He stuck out his chin petulantly. For a minute or two, he just watched, before he sighed. “Tree, tree, sign, tree, Starbucks, tree, tree, sign, McDonald's, tree, tree, and oh look, another Starbucks.”

Peter took a deep breath and let it out loudly. “Fine, you can play with the radio, you brat.”

Stiles smiled. “I’m not a brat. Kids are brats. I turned eighteen two months ago.”

“Did you?”

“You weren’t paying attention when I was talking about colleges the last few meetings, were you?” Stiles asked, and Peter gave him a short look with a brow lifted. “Of course, you weren’t.”

“Tell me. Why should I care?” 

Stiles was about to say that Peter was just an asshole, and that’s why he didn’t care, but then he stopped and actually thought about. Why should he honestly care? It wasn't not like Peter was his friend. Peter wasn’t really anyone’s friend. He was usually just there.

Did anyone ever ask how Peter was?

Instead of answering, Stiles just turned on the radio, gearing up to fiddle with it. But he was surprised when his favorite station came on. It was a rock station that played a mix of older songs sometimes dating back to the 70s and newer songs. The one on right then was Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey, and Stiles could not help himself. He turned it on and took a deep breath.

“A singer in a smokey room. The smell of wine and cheap perfume. For a smile, they can share the night.” He started drumming his hands on the dash to the beat. “It goes on and on and on and on!”

Then Peter started to sing too, clear and bright, and Stiles totally stumbled on the beginning of the next verse. “Strangers waiting up and down the boulevard,” Peter sang, giving Stiles a smug smirk. “Their shadows searching in the night.”

Stiles grinned and jumped in. “Streetlight people livin’ just to find emotion, hidin’ somewhere in the night!” He wasn’t quite able to hold out that note, but Peter was, and Stiles looked at him in awe. They sang the rest of the song in harmony, and Stiles felt warm and pleased at the end.

“I didn’t knew you could sing so well,” Stiles said at the station host babbled about the next few songs. 

Peter put on a kind of smile that Stiles had never seen before. It was such an open expression that Stiles stared. “Thank you,” he said, before he cleared his throat and the mask slipped back on. “The same can be said for you.”

Stiles didn’t mind that Peter put up his walls again. He just made a plan to try to get behind them again when he could. “Thanks,” he said, grinning. 

The next song came on, and they started singing in unison. “I’m bleeding out. So if the last thing that I do is bring you down, I’ll bleed out for you. So I bare my skin. And I count my sins. And I close my eyes. And I take it in. I’m bleeding out. I’m bleeding out for you, for you.”

When they got to Rita’s there was a bit of a wait, but that gave Stiles to study the large menu above the registers. There were so many flavors that Stiles had to really think about this now or he’d be left humming and hawing at the poor lady taking orders. Brownie batter overload? That sounded good. So did caramel turtle. Oh god, chocolate almond salted caramel. Of course mint chocolate chip. Oreo overload, mmm. What about turtle cheesecake?

By the time they reached the front of the line, he still hadn’t decided, so he just went with his usual ice cream order and got mint chocolate chip. He wasn’t going to regret it. He never did.

“Chocolate with chocolate sprinkles, please,” Peter said with a serious face, before he pulled out his wallet. Stiles stared at him with deep confusion, and Peter eventually looked at him. “What?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at him.

“Did you honestly just order something with sprinkles?” he asked as Peter handed his credit card over. Did Peter realized how preposterous he sounded? Sociopathic serial murdering werewolves did not say ‘sprinkles.’ Though, he hadn’t murdered in anyone since he’d been resurrected. Maybe there was a marshmallow under all that sass.

Peter lifted one eyebrow high and said, very solemnly, “Sprinkles are delicious.”

Wow.

When they got their custard, they headed out of the shop to eat at a table under a wide umbrella. It was just this side of warm, and it felt great on Stiles’s skin. They sat across from each other, quiet as they ate. It was a comfortable silence, which Stiles didn’t experience often, since his brain was always going a mile a minute and he tended to chatter on just to fill the quiet. Here, his mind was calm, and he was fine just eating with Peter there with him.

“So what colleges did you apply to?” Peter eventually asked when they were almost finish with their custard.

Stiles looked up, surprised. “I thought you didn’t care?”

Peter just pushed the last of custard around with his spoon. “I might care a little.”

Stiles tried not to smile too wide. “Well, I want to stay in the state, so I applied to Stanford, UCLA and Berkeley for sure. I have some back ups if I don’t get in.” 

“What are you planning on majoring in?” Peter asked, sitting up straighter and putting his napkin in his empty custard cup.

“I’m thinking either criminology or mythology,” Stiles replied, wiping his mouth. “I’ll major in one and minor in the other.”

Peter nodded, before he grabbed Stiles’s cup and stood up. “I went to Berkeley.” He headed toward the trash can.

Stiles followed him. “Really? What did you study?”

“English lit and creative writing,” Peter said as he tossed the cups and turned toward the parking lot.

“You’re a writer?” Stiles asked, eyes a bit wide. 

Peter looked at him, face blank. “Not anymore.”

Stiles didn’t even have to hear the reason why to know.

They headed back to the car, and when it started up the station they’d been listening too was in the middle of The (Shipped) Gold Standard by Fall Out Boy. Stiles slumped in his seat and started to sing along. “I wanna scream ‘I love you’ from the top of my lungs, but I’m afraid that someone else will hear me.”

Peter didn’t sing along.

When they reached the parking lot for the loft, it was like the spell had been broken. Peter was completely closed off, and Stiles was aching for that connection again. He was behind Peter as they headed to the building, and he took a deep breath, bolstering himself, before he burst into a jog.

“Peter--” he started, reaching out to grab the wolf’s hand. Electricity bloomed up his hand, not shocking but warm and tingly, and he sucked in a breath, which felt like the first one he’d taken in a long time. He trembled a little as he lifted his eyes to Peter’s face.

Peter had a similar expression on his face, his eyes glowing bright a moment before they calmed to cool blue. He wasn’t letting go of Stiles’s hand, instead turning and pulling his hand up. He laid Stiles’s hand against his cheek and closed his eyes, nuzzling his inner wrist. “And here I was thinking you didn’t exist,” he said softly.

Stiles let out a shaky breath, his whole body gently burning and tight. “You…”

Peter opened his eyes, and he smiled so beautifully. “Let me see your mark, Stiles.”

It was a little awkward with Peter holding his hand like that, but Stiles pulled down his collar to show the dark brown crescent moon below his collarbone. Peter gave it a long look, before he lowered Stiles’s hand, releasing it slowly. Then he touched the mark, and Stiles gasped at the shock wave of sensation.

He understood now. He understood everything.

“What about you?” Stiles said, a bit shaky, before he licked his dry lips.

Peter smiled and pushed the V-neck of his shirt to the side to show the very same mark next to the crease of his armpit. Stiles couldn’t help but touch it, and Peter sucked in a breath in surprise, before he chuckled. Stiles smiled too, because Peter’s skin was so smooth and warm. He wanted to keep touching him. But he forced himself to drop his hand.

“I guess I have someone to make out with too now,” Stiles said, grinning from ear to ear.

Peter laughed, louder and brighter, before he took Stiles’s hand. “Dinner first, I think, then we’ll talk about making out so vigorously that my nephew kicks out of the loft.”

Stiles squeezed Peter’s hand. “Hey, we all gotta have goals."

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi at [my Tumblr!](http://thesushiowl.tumblr.com) <3


End file.
